In the Dragon's Wake by AdmirableMonster  

“Where is she?”

“My lord—”

“Someone tell me where Hemmoril is!” Maglor snarled.  His own voice sounded unrecognizable to him, raw and hoarse, all its beauty fled.  Speech was like coughing up barbed wire.  But he had no time for the pain; he needed to gather the remnants of his household and get them somewhere safe before the Orcs returned.  And for that, he needed both a head count and a horse count and for the latter he needed Hemmoril.

“She is with her wife, my lord, but—” Airehísie tried to object, but Maglor cut her off again.

“Where?” This time she shook her head and pointed mutely in the direction of the kitchens.  Supplies, Maglor thought distractedly—they ought to try to rescue what supplies they could, before running like frightened children to Maedhros and begging him to take them in.

The kitchens were destroyed.  Maglor, coming round the side of the fortress on his approach, halted, appalled.  No, he thought, but there was no denying the rubble, the smoking ruin, the half-collapsed wall and embers still floating in the air.  Glaurung had passed here, then; whether on his way to meet Maglor’s forces or afterwards, when he had them scattered, Maglor did not know.  It did not really matter.

He found Hemmoril in the smoking remnants of the kitchen, on her knees.  She was the only sign of life.

“Hemmoril,” he croaked.  “I need you,” and she turned to him, eyes bright and blazing with something between fury and grief.

“They fought for you!” she cried, and he actually stumbled backwards, that awful pain in his throat redoubling.  “They fought for you.  All of them—the cooks and the smiths and the seamstresses, Maglor!”

The seamstresses.  Lanyariel.  There was a roaring in his ears.  “They, they should have fled, I told them—why—”

“Because they loved you!”

Because they loved you.  Maglor thought he might be sick.  Glaurung had come, and they had fought, and they had lost.  If Maglor’s forces, those trained Noldor warriors, had scattered like leaves on the wind before him, what could his household possibly have hoped to have accomplished? Because they loved you.

“Hemmoril,” he managed to get out.  “We must go.  I need to know how many horses we have left.  We have to make for Himring.”

“How dare you ask this of me now?”  Her voice burned with anger, an anger he had never felt his oldest friend direct towards himself.  Let her be angry.  He deserved it.  At least she lived to be furious with him.  And how could he even be glad of that, when her wife—when Lanyariel—

“Because I am still your lord, and you are not the only one who depends upon me,” Maglor said, and the voice he had used as the High King was not dampened by the smoke-inflicted rasp.  Hemmoril’s eyes widened, and she flinched.  “I need you to get up, Hemmoril.  I need you to help me gather the horses.  We will ride for Himring.”  And then you may shout at me or hit me or never speak to me again, whatever you like, but we must ride for Himring before we mourn our dead, or there will be no one left to mourn.

“Lanyariel—” Hemmoril choked, and it was more grief in her voice than anger now, but still her eyes were dry.

“Now, Hemmoril.  Or wilt thou foreswear thyself?”

Helplessly, she stared at him, her familiar face blank and strange and twisted, as he had never seen it.  After another moment, she rose to her feet.  “Yes, my lord,” she said, dully.  “The bodies?”

“Leave them.”  The cruelest cut of all, and he knew it, but he could not let the living die for the sake of the dead.  He hated this.  He thought he had left this behind when his brother gave up the throne.  I am a minstrel, I am a bard, I am a performer—I am no leader or lord.  Nor was he.  He had failed them all: all the kind, sweet, courageous folk who had kept the household functioning, all dead, all of them; his best friend’s wife—

And Nelyo.  Nelyo had trusted him.  They had all of them trusted him, but the Gap had fallen all the same.

“Yes, my lord,” Hemmoril whispered, and Maglor could not meet her eyes.

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